#does the writing get buried?

[ropebunnykant]

i fear the ending of agatha all along is once again making people confuse “i didn’t like the ending/the ending made me sad” with “that was bad writing”

[saetoru]

every time ppl write like one paragraph and tag it with x reader tags i think my eyes roll so far back i regress in age a little

[eyndr-stories]

Totally swamped from school & moving nonsense but rest assured, these silly robots still consume my every spare thought <3

[captain-lovelace]

[wundrousarts]

Hi folks! It seems like people are discovering that there are people online who write some WEIRD! 👎 stuff for Nevermoor. Some tips and tricks for dealing with that:

Don't engage. Don't read the fics. Don't even comment to say how much you hate it.

Don't spread it around. It's gross as hell, I know! But being like "ew, guys, I found this gross fic" just means you're causing more people to seek out said gross fic, and that's just not great. If you don't want to see it, no one else wants to either.

If you can: block, mute, or filter. I don't really use any fanfic sites to know if these functionalities exist, but I'm sure people online have found ways. Edit: here's a way to do it on Ao3.

TL;DR: Ignore, Ignore, Ignore. 👍

(PS: Same thing goes for when people send weird inappropriate anon messages. Just delete them from your inbox and don't subject others to them.)

This is unfortunately something that's been present for years in the fandom, on both Ao3 and Wattpad. This is also why I essentially don't read Nevermoor fics unless they're for Mogtober, and even then I'm cautious. I have seen some weird stuff written about my favorite characters that I wish I could pluck from my brain and set on fire, or worse! But when I stumble across that stuff, I just quickly close the tab and pivot to something else to get my mind off of it.

We should not entertain these types of people in a fandom full of minors about a middle grade series, so: just don't engage with them, ignore them, filter them out, and maybe even drown them out with some fics of your own.

[orcelito]

Thinking again about my plans for Vash and Knives in ITNL

Which I can't really get into the specifics for How I'm going to do things w/o going into spoiler territory. But I Do have Vash & Knives tagged on the fic for a reason. I set up in the first chapter that Vash is determined to try to save Knives too.

Which. That choice, as well as the entire basis for all of this, depends so much on that final fight in trimax. The one that was literally a scene away from where ITNL Vash went back in time. His mentality just a hair's width away from that...

At the end of trimax, there was reconciliation, however brief and incomplete it was. In ITNL, my question to myself was How could I induce that again? Under different circumstances, How Else could we get there? And that is the long-game in ITNL.

[july-19th-club]

favorite type of villanous characters are the ones whose motivations boil down to

like they dont even have to have any stakes in the broader situation. they just have take pleasure in destruction

[twerkstallion]

h.hey multichapter writers. how do you stay organized. how do you do it.

[sieglinde-freud]

thinking about them and banging my head against the wall again whats new. they are making me so emo. god. what the fuck

[abluescarfonwaston]

Hey... What do you think Mia called her Dad? Papa? Father? Daddy?

Because she must have been at least 9 or 10 when he died if not a little older. Like. She remembers him. Even if he was always outside the village for work she remembers him. Remembers Misty losing him. Had to explain to Maya, or maybe worse- never had to at all - why he wasn't there. How she got his sense of humor and his laugh and neither of them can be held tight by him anymore but she can hold Maya tight and maybe then he doesn't feel so far gone.

What did she call him? Did she love him? Did Maya ever get that chance?

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Slightly concerned that chapter 2 of my critically acclaimed new fic might be a bit shit...

[musical-chick-13]

Okay, no, sorry, I’m still mad about this. “Be critical of the media you consume and examine why you react to it in the way that you do, support marginalized and stigmatized identities.” Yeah, until it’s about mental illness.

A woman (or even man, if he’s deemed over-emotional) makes music about suffering from mental illness and people just go, “What are they complaining about, that’s so immature, hashtag wangst.” (And then, sometimes, inexplicably, if the mentally ill woman gets better and writes happier music, they then talk about how artistically bankrupt she is now and that she should go back to hating herself.) People LOVE cis white pRoBLeMaTiC (straight) fictional men until they are realistically mentally ill, in which case they’re “whiny” and “insufferable” and deserve to die violently, apparently (or, if fandom is merciful, they’re ignored). (And then they celebrate when they DO inevitably get killed off.) “Do your duty and watch [thing I, mc13, personally find insufferable] For The (white) Gays because it has Gays.” Sure, will you watch c4 Pure, the ONLY show specifically about OCD, then? (No, the answer is no, it’s always no.)

I can’t get anyone to watch Doom Patrol. I couldn’t get people (in general-I did convince a few irl friends thank GOD) to watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. One of the most popular and acclaimed shows right now has a character with schizophrenia who was turned into the Big Bad Villain for no fucking reason. One of the most commonly-cited examples of Iconic™ queer media involves a mentally ill man being broken over and over and over again before The Ship™ can reasonably happen. DW introduced a major character who was at one point suffering from mental illness in her past, AND THEN ALL MENTION OF THIS WAS COMPLETELY DROPPED IN THE FUTURE, WITH NO BEARING ON ANYTHING TO THE POINT WHERE I FORGOT IT EVEN EXISTED??!?!? R*tched was a thing that existed despite the Sad Sympathetic Backstory treatment being IN DIRECT CONTRADICTION OF WHAT PURPOSE THIS CHARACTER SERVED IN One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. THEY GAVE. A SAD WOOBIE VILLAIN TREATMENT. TO THE /LITERAL PERSONIFICATION/ OF ABLEISM. THAT IS HER FUNCTION. TO EXIST AS A SYMBOL OF ALL THE WAYS SOCIETY OPPRESSES THE DISABLED AND MENTALLY ILL.

I am!!! Literally!!!!! The only one!!!!!!!!! Complaining about these things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE ONLY ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No one else has said ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No one is talking about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m so tired!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[get-back-homeward]

Ram Revisited

Paul and Linda record their album Ram from October 1970 to March 1971, and it is released May 17, 1971. By May 26, John already had his infamous response, recording How Do You Sleep. This song gets a lot of attention for how cruel it seemed. One of John’s defenses by the album’s launch was that Paul had written special messages to him on Ram, only Paul didn’t print the lyrics so you couldn’t hear them. He mentions it a couple times, in print...

and at St Regis hotel press conference for the album release:

JOHN: But... I was laughing at [Ram] later, but first, I was saying, “Oh! Hmm. Oh, I see. Oh, that’s what he thinks,” huffing and puffing. That’s the first thing I heard on his album, was all this – this message, you see. [x]

JOHN: It’s just a moment of anger. But I just put it down on paper. And also, I’m answering Paul’s last album, which mostly because he didn’t hand out a lyric sheet, [people] don’t know what he was saying [on it]. [x]

JOHN: You mightn’t hear ‘em, but I can hear ‘em, and I know Paul. [x] 

and during live interviews, where he gets cut off from finishing his point every time. But he seems particularly bothered by the lack of printed lyrics.

JOHN: Little messages that Paul sent to me on Ram. Which, funny, I publish my lyrics you see. He doesn’t, so you have to listen. [x]

It’s tempting to laugh at this, if you think it’d just an excuse for HDYS, or call him kookoo, if you think he’s just obsessed with Paul and reading things that aren’t there. But I find the comments rather curious in light of idea that the Beatles, particularly John and Paul, had a shared language that dates back to when they were kids in Liverpool and was used as late as 1969 as seen in Get Back. By design, the language is used to protect and exclude, so any analysis by outsiders will probably be utterly meaningless. But I thought I’d take it on face value that John was hearing something the average listener couldn’t without printed lyrics to try to understand the root of the anger that drives HDYS.

As a thought experiment, I decided to relisten to Ram for the first time while reading the lyrics, with an eye for words I couldn’t hear (or misheard before) along with album themes. Full disclosure, I’ve always listened to this album while working on something else, so while I may be have seen looked up lyrics for a song or two independently (Too Many People, Back Seat), I didn��t read them while listening to the song or consider them in the context of the full album, all of which create a different experience. I used Spotify’s lyrics function while listening to the 2012 remastered album, so any lyric variations may be Spotify’s fault.

Starting from the top. The album begins with Too Many People, which opens with an indiscernible line that’s a play on words.

Piss off cake-->piece of cake. I had no idea that’s what he was singing at the start. For 20 years, I heard this line as “this I got to say-ay-ay”. That said, “piss off cake” still doesn’t tell us much. I’m with this guess that this phrase is an in-joke turned nasty, like a firing shot John heard right at the start.

Two “mistakes” are mentioned here. The first mistake gets a lot of attention (”going underground”, “took your lucky break and broke it in two”) and is generally attributed to John asking for a divorce/leaving the band, though I question it (see below). But the last mistake is the hidden dagger I never heard without looking up the lyrics:

“I find my love awake and waiting to be...” followed by the stinger chord is an unfinished sentence. The verb ‘be’ is doing all the work, suggesting a missing past participle left unsaid. John is no stranger to using simple verbs to stand in for prohibited ones, as Norwegian Wood and Don’t Let Me Down show. Paul stops just short of making it vulgar, but the implication is there. By making the arena in bed, the suggestion is inherently sexual--not only in the unfinished sentence but also in the 1-minute guitar solo climax that follows, complete with dog howling. This makes the dagger a sexual taunt, and I keep trying to hear other interpretations, but I only hear one: Literally this could have been you in my bed but you blew it and now I have her. Not ever but never again. It’s a closed door. Slammed in your face. Now what can be done for you? as the guitar goes wild. Suggestive of bedroom fun you’re shut off from.

Okay, I can see how that could ignite someone’s anger, especially one prone to jealousy.

The trouble I have with this is timing. If “first mistake” is the divorce meeting (Sept 20) then what is the “last mistake” that deserves this sexual taunt? Paul always talks about the divorce meeting as if John declaring he’s leaving the band and wanting a divorce (from him) as the same moment. Maybe the “first mistake” is mislabeled, as John’s “going underground” wish begins in 1968 with Yoko and his controversial public actions from nude album covers to bagism events (not to mention private actions like covering personal debt and bringing outsiders into the recording studio) that caused a schism at Apple at its crucial first few months. Paul talks about summer 1968 as a difficult time for him, where he felt like everything was falling apart. Dick James their publisher is watching all of this and making business calculations. By March 1969, in the middle of their honeymoons with their wives, he decides to sell Northern Songs.

Would John pinpoint his "first mistake” as Yoko? IDK. He’d know when his relationship with Paul got rocky, at least professionally. They seem to be arguing about this underground direction as early as May 1968 (NYC), perhaps even earlier. In interviews, Yoko seems to focus on this part, which may indicate her feeling it was about her.

But if the “first mistake” is May 1968 and in the realm of music/business/professional, then the “last mistake” is the final straw and it’s personal.

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

Paul recounts September 20 as if John betrayed him, getting him to sign the EMI contract before telling him he wanted the divorce. Paul felt tricked, like the rug was pulled out from under him. The hidden dagger in the song works the same way.

The second track, 3 Legs, begins innocently enough (When I walk on my horse upon the hill). It seems like empty nonsense until this accusation:

It’s a explicitly John-directed lyric: Paul’s emotional state is caused by John’s actions. I still hear “you let me down” (recalling Don’t Let Me Down) even though the original lyrics sheet says “left” and these printed ones say “laid.” So it’s worth taking a closer look at the rest.

This is a weird lyric taken literally. Paul’s doodling a three-legged thing and a three-legged dog on the lyrics sheet for this song. The dog doesn’t look like any of the dogs they had at the time to my knowledge. Dog could be a stand-in for another word John understood.

I enjoy @jobey-wan-kenobi’s​ idea of “three leg” as surrealist imagery that suggests an off-kiltered scene and reflects the writer’s state of mind. Both John and Paul spoke about being inspired by surrealist art and using it in lyrics to mask.

Didn’t John talk about having a reoccurring dream of flying above the clouds as a kid? I believe he used it to justify his whole egocentric interpretation of Strawberry Fields. But this flying seems the opposite of an ego trip:

He’s so unstable, the listener could knock him down from his flight with a feather.

But you know it’s not allowed

Ram On is the nearest to the title track but only a wisp of a thing, so it gets lost in the attention to Too Many People. I swear every time I hear it, I hear it another way.

Is it about needing love quickly? You’ll take anyone who appears next around the bend? Or is it about the unpredictability or impermanence of love? The someone round the bend coming to take the somebody you just gave your heart to? It shapeshifts, depending on how you approach it. But the second one reminds me of what John says later about love slipping away as soon as you look at it directly, as soon as you try to possess it completely. And hey what was that in 3 Legs?

When I thought, when I thought you was my friend... But you laid me down Put my heart round the bend

That lyrical link suggests the latter option. The earlier question in 3 Legs also fits with this theme of the unpredictability of love.

When I walk, when I walk On my horse upon the hill... Will my lover love me still?

But it may also suggest freedom. To do your own thing outside and then return home with a lover waiting. Like Too Many People. She’s waiting for me...

Big Barn Bed (not released til 1973) is first recorded with other 1970 Ram home recordings. It starts as a coda for Ram On and later becomes its own song. It has a similar “round the bend” line: Who’s that coming round the corner? Will it be my friend?

Which suggests more anticipation than worry but gives the same feeling of unpredictability toward the listener who is also the friend who let him down.

Bug lore is that John thought Dear Boy was for him, though I’m having trouble finding a source on that. I always found it pretty hilarious, as I do think it fits best with Paul’s story that it’s Linda’s ex-husband. The “When I stepped in” part makes sense with that interpretation. But it’s funny to think about John thinking it’s about him:

What’s John hearing Paul say here? I loved you and you didn’t even see it! And you know what, maybe Paul knew John would hear it like that and it was half the fun. It’s not hard to see that Paul identified with Linda’s feeling of being unappreciated in her prior marriage. And it’s common for Paul to start a song about one person or idea and then it becomes transformed into being about something else. Layers are possible in all their songs. John talks about the layers he hears in their old songs in Jan 1969, layers that he didn’t hear when they wrote them. So it’s possible John heard this connection. It may have just made him angry because John suggests elsewhere that he was the one who felt unappreciated and neglected.

However, even with Paul’s interpretation, John still shows up as the reason Paul’s heart was down and out and positions Linda as an antidote:

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive

I always filed away Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey as a simple character mashup. But looking at the words, I started to question that. Could Uncle Albert, a real uncle of Paul’s, also act as a stand-in character for someone else? The theme of no one left at home is echoed in Little Lamb Dragonfly, which is home recorded with RAM songs but held back until 1973 Red Rose Speedway.

But the line that follows is a peculiar one. I always thought I was hearing it wrong, surely it is it’s gonna rain. But the lyrics tell me it’s I’m gonna rain:

So could it be a metaphor or stand-in for an emotion like sadness or a visible reaction like crying? Or is it like 3 Leg? More surrealist projection of instability when charting new waters.

The second section, Admiral Halsey, has nautical themes that suggest more than meets the eye. Remember both John and Paul talked about the Beatles as a boat, with John talking about leaving the Beatles as jumping off Paul’s boat and onto Yoko’s boat.

Paul’s delivery of “berth” sounds like “bath” to me, so I can’t see how anyone could pick up this line in full before, except maybe if you knew that’s how Paul pronounces -er- sounds. But it certainly is a suggestive of a metaphor for a significant event. Perhaps about the day that Ringo as the messenger notified Paul about the McCartney release date change (to make room for his own album)? Or more personally, about Paul having to back away from John to make room for Yoko?

But what on earth is butter pie? Wiki tells me it’s a Lancashire-based savory pie of onions and potatoes (so meatless). But my mind goes straight to Penny Lane (finger pies), so I’m just gonna assume it’s something dirty.

Hands across the water, hands across the sky

Linda’s harmonies and backing vocals are just so cool. It had to have gotten to John that she so easily fits into this vocal role next to Paul, especially in the more silly moments featured here. Especially considering humor was such a large component of John and Paul’s relationship.

There’s limitations to printing lyrics though and I get Paul’s right to not print them earlier because sometimes it take away from all the wordplay and double meanings inherent in the sounds of the words. For example, I always heard some of these “smile away”s in Smile Away as “it’s my way,” and so I’m surprised that phrase is never printed in the lyrics:

However, given the double meanings elsewhere, I think it’s worth still considering because "it’s my way” fits into the album theme of not blindly following along and finding your own path.

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

A lot of focus is on Too Many People as the trigger for How Do You Sleep. But it’s a question directed a line from Heart Of The Country.

I’m gonna get me a good night sleep

It’s the one respite on the whole album and I can see how the image of smug Paul could send John in a writing fury.

Monkberry Moon Delight plays with “ketchup” and “catch up” and both of these appear in the lyrics. But is it beretta the gun or biretta the hat? Or something else? Ram sessions include Oh Woman Oh Why with gun sounds that gets left off the album, and photos from the session show Paul holding a prop gun. There’s also a gun-like object drawn on the Ram back cover. So maybe he did mean the gun. Inclusion of that song would have turned the tone of entire album, from jaunty taunts to serious violence, so it’s the right choice to keep it off. John would only hear the beretta line here with “banana” and the gun on the back cover:

and i don’t get the gist of your letter

Considering John and Paul are sending letters back and forth across 1970, this line sounds like a taunt for John alone. Along with what follows:

don’t get left behind

which makes this...

...another sexual taunt like Too Many People. Haha, look at what you’re missing!

If you’re doubting that, the track order clears it up fast because it’s followed immediately by....

Eat At Home. No explanation required.

It is an outright banger. No way John wasn’t a tad impressed by it. Even if it exudes those aggressive “I am having so much fun with my wife right now and not even thinking of you” vibes that left John shook.

Am I the only one that thought some of these “little lady”s were “lad”s? Paul stresses the -d so the -y sounds silent except for Linda’s backing. The result is pretty...ambiguous at times.

So I’m left thinking it’s a bit odd how this song ends on the negative: don’t do that. If the sexual connotation starts it, it ends with something that sounds unwanted, like it goes too far. A revoking of consent. But is it the lad(y) going too far? Or someone else?

Don’t let them tell you what you want to be

Long Haired Lady is an ode to Linda that starts with a jokey call and response between Paul and Linda and builds into a section that channels The Mamas & The Papas with lush, blissfully layered harmonies:

I’m good up til “win or lose it” but I don’t know if anyone could have heard “into the soul”. I’m not so sure it matters much, but the suggestion seems to be that love continues whether or not you “win or lose” love. That no matter if you are wrong, love is stable, constant. Wait, where have I heard that before?

Generally, I find Back Seat of My Car to be the strangest one for John to think was directed at him (and Yoko?). It’s just so big and sweeping and wasn’t Paul and Linda the one who did the joyriding? But that whole we believe that we can’t be wrong really got to him. He mentions it a lot, sometimes attributing the line to him and Yoko and other times to Paul and Linda about them (”well I believe that you could possibly be wrong!“). It’s a real hangup for John around this time, the idea that Paul is always right and he is wrong. Seeing Paul’s predictive powers, I can see how infuriating it would be after a while, and how comforting it would be to have people around you who counter that, to tell you “no, you are right and he’s wrong.” How it’d make you dig your heels in and work hard to get people off the McCartney bandwagon.

There’s a whole gibberish sounding section not picked up in the printed lyrics that sounds like “everyone’s tried to love her” or “i’m gonna try to love her” sung at an auctioneer’s pacing. You could possibly read something into that depending on what you hear.

Here’s another mention of “my way” after “highway”, suggestive of the idiom “my way or the highway”. The second half of the “looking for a ride” lines I can’t hear even with the lyrics:

“and all I found” would have been my guess.

But if you’re taking everything else as a sexual taunt, looking for a ride could hold a double meaning.

The climatic ending of the song and album is the height of choosing your own way and building your own world:

We believe that we can’t be wrong

A brash assertion of confidence in your own choices? A mocking condemnation of someone else’s choices? Or aggressive positivity to vanquish agonizing about whether you’re right or wrong? Like others on the album, it depends on how you look at it. But the first option fits with the overall album theme, with the third behind it as another layer.

There’s a snowglobe imagery to the feeling of this ending. Swirling and wondrous and heady but also contained and protective and isolated by design, living in this world you’ve built for yourself. You control it to a point while fearing what’s outside, the unpredictability of the future and the unknown of what’s waiting for you around the bend. 

Wrapup

Overall, there’s a story in the album themes. Starting with a declaration of independence and naming mistakes and ending with the denial of wrongness, suggesting your own. From John’s comments, we know he got that part. In between a conditional: if you choose wrong, love is long. Throughout, the main theme is strong, finding your own way and building a new life to push forward, which makes the cover less of a joke and more of an apt metaphor for a precisely crafted album. The pronouns look fairly consistent too, which is a big surprise to me: you are sending hearts around the bend, but she waits for me. There’s double meanings galore with possible sexual taunts as hidden daggers. But, above all, there is the repeated need for love that’s in alignment amidst confusion and miscommunication.

Will my lover love me still? (3 Legs)

Bring the love that you feel for me in line with the love I see (Eat At Home)

Do you love me like you know you ought to do? (Long-Haired Woman)

The trouble with any shared language is what may get lost from the communicator to the listener. If you get 9 out of 10 things but the 10th thing was important for understanding the other 9, the risk of misunderstanding is still huge. So I’m left wondering whether John listened to the album enough in those first 9 days to hear these lines before recording HDYS. He may have regretted venting his anger in more obvious public daggers than Paul’s more hidden ones the more he listened. By September, he knows the album well enough to sing an exact match on the spot.

Undoubtedly, John knew just where to hit because he knew Paul’s weaknesses. He shows that by dragging it into the public sphere. If Paul’s messages are directed at John but subtle or hidden, John’s messages are blatant as neon lights about Paul to the world. There’s an unevenness there that makes us uneasy.

By focusing on John brandishing the dagger so obviously in one song, it’s easy to miss the hidden daggers in Ram along the gems. A concealed dagger can do the same damage. But the overall theme of needing a constant unwavering love is one they ultimately shared, signalling a place where they could find common ground once the anger cleared.

[altfire]

sucks i cant look up starfield on any social without seeing a million posts about how bad it is and how its flop is affecting the industry. like i understand the gripes and the game def isnt the huge success bethany thought it would be but god is it a crime to want to see ANY content from actual fans

[aphomic]

/ Humbly speaking, I think the best spot to kiss d.oppo at is riiiiight at the nape of his neck, just ruffle up a bit the back of his messy hair and boom. Target spotted